


sings the revolution

by meretricula



Series: Like A Hand Grenade [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Baby Dream Team, F/M, Feminist Themes, Genderswap, Mixed Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-27
Updated: 2011-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-17 07:56:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/pseuds/meretricula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cesc Fabregas is born a girl. She still loves football.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sings the revolution

  
**FIFA Ballon d'Or 2015 - LIVE! January 12**   


**FIFA Ballon d'Or 2015 Live with FourFourTwo 12.1.15**

Huw Davies: And it's LIONEL MESSI!

Tim Stannard: It's only his fifth, I suppose he's still allowed to look a little surprised. Lovely embrace between him and Carlos Fabregas, who was sitting next to him. Handshake from Theo Walcott on Fabregas' other side and he's climbing up to the stage.

Huw Davies: Whoops! Awkward moment there, Cesca Fabregas went for the cheek-kiss, Messi went for a hug, the Ballon d'Or got squashed in a place I'm not allowed to explicitly name on this liveblog.

Huw Davies: Lucky Cesca's wearing flats and not heels like our lovely host, or else that might have been Messi's face between the unmentionables. She's taller than he is already.

Tim Stannard: Lucky for Cesca, maybe, Messi probably would have enjoyed it! Blimey but that's a very long hug, I suppose he'll want to congratulate her on her win as well.

[comment from Daniel S]  
Seems a bit unkind to ask her to hand over the prize when her brother was in the running and didn't win, doesn't it?

Huw Davies: A bit, maybe, but witness the fond embrace. Ms Fabregas knows all three of the men's finalists, actually. Her brother, obviously, but she and Messi are childhood friends and Carlos Fabregas used to drag Walcott to a lot of Arsenal Ladies games back when she still played there.

Tim Stannard: Well, Messi's finally let go of Cesca long enough for her to hand him his trophy. God, imagine the children those two could have.

[source: FourFourTwo.com](http://fourfourtwo.com/news/championsleague/74128/default.aspx)

*

"Cesca! Cesca, wait!" Leo finally caught up to her, panting a little. As fast as Leo could run, she had longer legs and a head start. "Stop it, okay, just stop, come on - "

Cesca glared down at him - she was still a little taller than Leo; taller than a kid with a growth hormone deficiency, at least she had that going for her, she thought bitterly - and swiped at her dripping nose. "Leave me alone."

"Come on, please, you know he didn't mean it," Leo said, as if she hadn't said anything. "He's just - Geri has to be careful about tackles, you know he does, he got lectured two days ago about it, he's bigger than everybody so the refs pay attention. He didn't mean - "

"I don't care about - Geri can go fuck himself," she said furiously. " _Carlos_ \- "

Leo deflated. "He just doesn't want you to get hurt."

"I'm _older_ than he is! I don't need him to - to - to fucking tell Geri he can't - I'm not some stupid airhead and I'm not a little girl and I can take the goddamn tackles!"

"You think I don't - " Leo stopped and looked away. "They're careful with me too," he said tightly. "You think I don't notice? I know I'm the smallest but I'm not - I just want to _play_."

"At least you'll grow," Cesca said. She sat on the grass and stared broodingly down at her own chest. She felt rather than saw Leo settle beside her. "All I'm going to grow are bigger goddamn tits."

He coughed, and when she glanced at him he was turning red. "They're not that big now," he said bravely. "So maybe they'll stay little."

"Thanks a ton." She shoved his shoulder, but not too hard; he didn't fall over. He pushed back, more as a formality than anything else. "I really appreciate your evaluation. You can do semi-annual check-ups, see how they're doing."

"Fuck you," Leo muttered. He let her rest her head on his shoulder for a minute before he added, "Come on, let's finish the game. We'll just keep scoring until Geri gets pissed enough to foul us again."

"Yeah, okay," Cesca said without moving. Leo got up and leaned down to her, holding out his hands to help her to her feet.

*

[   
](http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/meretricula/?action=view&current=tweetconversationtranslation.png)

[source: Twitter](http://twitter.com/#!/barcastuff)

*

Beijing was hot, and crowded, and Kun had been chattering at Leo non-stop since he arrived, but Leo was so relieved that he'd gotten there at all that he didn't even notice, let alone mind. Just unpacking his clothes and putting them away felt like liberation. He'd made it to the Olympics. Now all that was left was winning.

Eventually he tuned back into what Kun was saying, which was something about a tennis player who'd brought his Playstation and introducing Leo to some of the other athletes from Argentina. "We have to go to Cesca's game this afternoon," Leo said firmly.

"Ah, the mysterious Cesca, of whom I have heard so much. I hope her tits live up to my expectations," Kun snorted. Leo glared. "Wait, are you serious? You want to go watch the English women's team play?"

"You'll see," Leo said. "Watch her play, you'll see. The way she passes - you'll get it, okay."

"Yeah, you know, normal people don't fall in love with the way a girl kicks a football," Kun said.

"Shut up," Leo mumbled. "I'm not - it's not. Nobody passes like Cesca."

*

  
**Carlos on life and football in England**   


**Fabregas Week continues today on Arsenal.com with a feature which first appeared in the official Arsenal Magazine in April 2005.**

 **The Spanish midfielder was interviewed alongside his clubmate and housemate, Philippe Senderos. The duo discuss their friendship, life in England, their progress at Arsenal and their hopes for the future…**

…

 **How has living together helped you settle into life in England?**

PS: It has been really good, you know? I was here first, for a few months, actually, in 2003, and then Carlos and his sister Cesca came to live at Noreen's too, and that has helped a lot, because I was injured and I would get lonely sometimes but they were always there to cheer me up. It's really frustrating not to play but Carlos would play videogames and talk with me, and Cesca used to take me to all my physio sessions. It kept me from feeling too down.

CF: Definitely living with Phil was so great when we first came, because Cesca and I didn't speak English very well and he was really patient when we needed him to translate everything for us! And English football is very different from what I was used to, so he had to help me with that too. But he's always looking out for us, you know, even now, he's like a big brother.

 **As you work together and live together, there must be times when you just want to get away from each other?**

CF: You must not have siblings! Of course sometimes I want to get away, I don't want to be around my sister all the time either, but we're friends and we get along and if one of us needs space it's not a problem.

PS: I think we try to give each other room when we can, but like Carlos said, we're friends, so being around each other so much isn't a big deal.

 **How do you like living in Barnet?**

PS: It's really nice! We don't really go out much but I've eaten at a few restaurants and they were nice. I think it's a good place to live. We're going to be looking for our own places soon, I'm already looking, actually, but Barnet is really nice.

CF: It's a nice neighborhood. Cesca and I are going to be moving out soon, too, so poor Noreen can have her house back, but we really like the neighborhood. It's quiet. Actually, Phil, we didn't ask you yet, do you want to move with us?

PS: I don't know, where are you moving to?

CF: Well, if you say yes you can help us pick!

PS: Okay, yes.

CF: Great! Cesca and I can't cook, we need him or we'll starve to death.

PS: There's always takeaway.

CF: And then we get fat and the coach will kill us so either way we die!

[source: Arsenal.com](http://www.arsenal.com/usa/sh/news/news-archive/cesc-on-life-and-football-in-england)

*

England won 3-1. Even Kun got into it by the end, and Leo was hoarse from cheering all three of Cesca's assists. He didn't watch games much, really; he'd rather be playing them. It was bizarre to feel so nervous about a result he couldn't change.

It was bizarre to feel nervous about seeing Cesca, too, but it had been a while. They talked on the phone a lot - more than a lot lately, when Leo had been waiting to see if he would be allowed to go to Beijing in the end and Cesca had been waiting to see if her team's qualification would be allowed to stand - but it wasn't the same.

He left Kun and went down to Cesca's locker room to say hello anyway. He meant to wait outside, but one of the other women on the team saw him and said something he didn't understand in English, and somehow he ended up being dragged inside. He didn't see Cesca at first, and he was trying to both look for her and not look at her teammates in various states of undress when something ran into him from behind. "You're here, you're here!" Cesca said excitedly. Leo managed to squirm around in her arms so he could see her properly, and her smile lit up her whole face. "I told you you'd make it, I _told_ you," she said, hugging him even tighter. She hadn't showered yet, and she _reeked_. Leo didn't care. He put his arms around her and held on.

Eventually one of the English girls said something that made Cesca laugh and let go long enough to swat Leo in the back of the head. "And you, you fucker, why didn't you text me to say you were here? Some friend you are. Come here, I want you to meet - Kelly! Kelly!" Cesca's next words were an incomprehensible mess of English, but an older woman dropped her bag on the floor and came over, so Leo guessed that Cesca had been talking to her. "Leo, this is Kelly, that's Alex, that's Rachel, that's Anita - "

Kelly said something in English and then held out her hand to Leo. "Hello," she said carefully. "How are you?"

"I'm good," Leo said, shaking her hand. "And you?" Cesca giggled, and Kelly turned to her instead of answering Leo, going off in English again. Leo shuffled his feet awkwardly and waited.

"Hey, are you staying in the village?" Cesca finally asked. "Do you want to go get something to eat?"

"Uh, sure," Leo said.

She turned back to Kelly and had another rapid-fire exchange in English that ended with Cesca rolling her eyes and dragging Leo out the door. "Kelly says I should avoid being within a three-meter radius of anybody until I've had a shower, but whatever, you've smelled worse. I can take a shower at your place. Come on, let's get weird Chinese food on the way! Alex told me they sell fried scorpions here, can you believe that?"

"I'm not eating scorpions," Leo said, fumbling for his phone so he could text Kun. He didn't know why the thought of Cesca in his shower was making him blush. It was just _Cesca_.

"Aww, come on, I don't want to try them by myself!" she protested. "Don't be such a pussy."

"Bugs are not for eating," Leo said firmly. His Blackberry buzzed with a reply from Kun.

 _room's all yours! free olympic condoms in bedside drawer! ;)_

Leo blushed even harder.

*

  
**The Foreign Face of the WPL**   
  
**Francesca Fabregas is a lovely young woman, a devoted sister, and an extraordinarily talented footballer. But should she really be the face of English women's football? She isn't even English.**

Rod Liddle

Quick, name the starting eleven of the Arsenal Ladies. Can't manage it? Well, don't beat yourself up about it; I couldn't either. But the one name you - and I - could probably manage is Cesca Fabregas. Finally, women's football has a marketable face: talented, beautiful, charming Cesca. A poster of her in her Arsenal uniform hangs in the window of Nike's flagship store in London. She is forever in the tabloids for attending some charity banquet or concert with her brother, Carlos Fabregas, darling of women and Arsenal fans alike. If only she could acquire a pop-star for a boyfriend she could be the WPL's answer to David Beckham.

But what exactly is she famous for? No one, aside from the handful of Gunners fans so die-hard they even check the results of the women's team, had ever heard of Francesca Fabregas until May 2008, when Sky Sports aired a one-off television program called "The Carlos Fabregas Show: Nike Live," which (obviously) starred Carlos Fabregas in various sketches, but also featured his sister, along with Arsenal players such as Philippe Senderos and Nicklas Bendtner, coach Arsene Wenger, and Matt Lucas of _Little Britain_. Originally the filmmakers had planned to interview the Fabregas parents, but since Cesca speaks fluent English and was, after all, already there - at the time, she was sharing living quarters with her brother and Senderos - she was drafted instead and appeared in nearly all of the scenes.

She stole the show. Nike, intrigued by the marketing potential of her chemistry with her brother, signed an endorsement contract with her and began featuring both Fabregas siblings together in promotional campaigns, especially after Carlos Fabregas was awarded the captaincy of Arsenal in November 2008 (Cesca had been captain of the Ladies side for a year already). They were the primary faces of Nike's recent Men vs. Women Challenge in the UK. They are the Captains Fabregas, and they sell.

They're not just selling Nike boots, though. Indirectly, they are selling women's football. Attendance of the Arsenal Ladies' matches skyrocketed - in part influenced, no doubt, by Carlos Fabregas' efforts to bring his own, more famous teammates with him to watch his sister play. When the Arsenal Ladies won their third UEFA Women's Cup in May 2009, he was in the stands, and so were Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry, Theo Walcott, Gerard Pique, and Rafael Nadal. There was more media interest in the players watching the game than the ones on the pitch.

No-one could argue with the fact that English women's football needs the attention. The clubs have shockingly little money to spend on equipment, training grounds, even uniforms; they have even less to give to their players. Cesca receives no salary at all and was completely supported by her brother before she signed her contract with Nike. She continues to live rent-free in his house, and he still pays for the fashionable frocks she wears when they're out on the town. In a sense, the Fabregases encapsulate the parasitic relationship between Arsenal FC and the Arsenal Ladies: the women, despite having achieved vastly more success in recent years, are entirely dependent upon the goodwill and sufferance of their brother team.

Is that really the image that women's football wants to present?

And really, is Cesca Fabregas the image that _English_ women's football wants to present? Yes, technically she is a British citizen. Yes, she plays for the English national team. Yes, she was instrumental in their campaign to qualify for the World Cup and then the Olympics, and even owns a bronze medal from Beijing for her pains. But like the charming Spanish accent in her otherwise perfect English, she will never entirely shake her origins in Barcelona, the city that has produced so much footballing talent, including her brother, for Spain. The one area in which the WPL is indisputably superior to the Premier League is its production and nurturing of local talent. It cannot lose that, and the prominence of Cesca Fabregas, the Spanish postergirl of English women's football, runs contrary to all national pride in the WPL.

On a less idealistic level, letting Fabregas become the pretty face that represents the league is simply ill-conceived. Sooner or later, she will leave; like so many of their countrymen, she and her brother will eventually ride off into the sunset toward other, warmer shores, Johnny and Jenny Foreigner headed home at last. If the WPL doesn't want all interest in their clubs and games to collapse when that day inevitably arrives, they need to promote the other girls. The English ones.

[source: The Sunday Times](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/rod_liddle/article6493089.ece)

*

"And did you _see_ my pass for 2-1?" Cesca yelled over the sound of water running in the bathroom. "I mean, Kelly's a fucking genius, she could score off of nothing, but fuck, that was an awesome assist."

Leo remembered the pass, the defenders scrambling when they realized it had split them down the middle, the perfect angle for another white jersey to just tap the ball into the net, the goalkeeper _nowhere_. "It was," he agreed.

The water shut off, and Cesca opened the door. "Hey, can I borrow a shirt or something? Mine's all gross and sweaty." The towel barely covered her to mid-thigh. Leo was used to seeing guys naked all the time in the locker room, but this was Cesca, and she was definitely not a guy. Kun's remark about her breasts floated into his mind, and he spent a distracted second hating Kun. Then he actually looked, and hated himself more.

"Leo?"

"Uh?" he choked.

"Leo, can I have a shirt?"

"I, uh, um - "

"Leo, the fuck is wrong with you?" Cesca put her hands on her hips. The towel, already precarious, slipped a few more millimeters.

"You're naked and I think I want to kiss you!" Leo blurted.

Cesca blinked, then looked down at herself. "Really? I mean, it's not - um. You think you want to kiss me, or you actually want to kiss me?"

Leo gulped. "I definitely want to kiss you."

"Oh," Cesca said. "Okay."

*

[IMAGE DESC. Three women in blue soccer jerseys standing together with their backs to a railing. A soccer pitch is visible behind them. The woman in the middle has her arms around the other two. At the bottom of the image, the following text is written: KELLY SMITH #10 FORWARD // CESCA FABREGAS #4 MIDFIELDER // ALEX SCOTT #22 DEFENDER.]

TRANSCRIPT  
AS: So, hi, I'm Alex Scott, this is Kelly -

KS: I'm Kelly Smith -

AS: And we are very proud that we can finally present, in this exclusive interview, after a very long wait -

CF: It was one year!

AS: A very long wait, the woman, the legend, the assist machine, Cesca Fabregas!

CF: (laughter) You're awful! (more laughter) Hi, I'm Cesca Fabregas, I'm a midfielder and I'm a player for the Boston Breakers, I'm very happy to be here with these very special ladies -

AS: What's that supposed to mean?

CF: It means you're special and I'm happy to be here!

KS: Alex needs to work on her listening skills.

AS: I hear you just fine when you're shouting for the ball!

CF: Maybe we should keep a list of all the times we shout and Alex doesn't pass to us. She either has selective hearing or selective memory.

AS: (laughter) Okay, okay! Stick to the script! (to the camera) Since we have now had an entire week of team practice with the peerless Cesca, we thought she should answer some questions about her teammates. First of all, Cesca, who is your favorite teammate on the Boston Breakers?

CF: Not you! (laughter) No, no, you and Kelly are of course my favorites because I know you for so long, I was very very happy to come to Boston because I knew you would be here and I missed playing with you last year so much! But maybe Kelly is my most favorite because she lets me live in her apartment until I find a place of my own and she cooks better than me. So she is my favorite.

AS: I'm heartbroken. What if I cooked for you?

CF: Make me my mama's paella, you will be my favorite. Sorry, Kelly.

KS: I see how it is!

CF: But right now you are my favorite!

KS: I guess I better learn to make paella then so I'll stay that way.

CF: You make me paella, I make you assists, we will have the most beautiful friendship.

AS: And I'm left out in the cold again.

CF: Well, we have a special attackers bond! You cannot come between us!

AS: (to the camera) It's true.

[source: YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1YkALiRI2U&feature=related)

*

Leo wasn't sure what woke him up, and then he saw the blue glow of a cell phone screen reflected off of Cesca's face, and realized it had been the soft beeping of the keys. "What are you doing?" he yawned.

"Texting Kelly."

Leo had a sudden, horrific vision of every humiliating detail of their encounter being giggled over in English before Cesca's next practice. It hadn't gone perfectly, to put it kindly. "Oh," he managed.

Cesca looked up from her phone and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "She's my roommate. I didn't want her to wonder where I was, that's all."

"Oh," Leo repeated. "Um. Cesca, if I - I didn't - "

Cesca's smile dropped off her face. "Do you want me to go?"

"If I wasn't - if it wasn't - _good_ ," Leo barreled on helplessly.

" _Oh_." Cesca laughed. "Leo. It's fine. We'll just have to practice."

"Oh, okay," Leo said, relieved. He could handle practicing just fine.

*

[   
](http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/meretricula/?action=view&current=watchingtheUSOPEN.png)

[source: Twitter](http://twitter.com/#!/cesc4official/status/24313453229)

*

"Oh my god," Cesca said. Leo kept eating. "Leo. Leo. Leo, that's Rafael Nadal." Leo felt Kun jerk upright on his other side, and Cesca yanked at his sleeve until he finally looked up. "Leo he's coming over here oh my god Leo _Rafael Nadal_ \- "

"Hola," said Rafael Nadal. "You're Lionel Messi, no?"

"Yeah," Leo mumbled. Cesca let out a nearly inaudible squeak.

"I'm Rafa Nadal," Nadal said. Leo nodded awkwardly. "Can I have your autograph?"

"Uh, sure," Leo said blankly. "What do you want me to sign?"

Nadal beamed at him. "I appreciate it," he said, producing a football and a Sharpie. "I love to watch you play."

Leo felt a rush of tell-tale heat in his cheeks, and ducked his head a little. "You too," he managed. He signed the football and ventured a look up as he passed it back. Nadal was still grinning, his entire face crinkled with laugh-lines, and exuding enough charisma to knock over a horse.

"Thank you!" Nadal said cheerfully. "Good luck with your tournament, no?" He started to turn away. Leo glanced at Cesca, puzzled, and was met with an unfamiliar sight: she was completely speechless. He thought she might actually be paralyzed with adoration.

"Wait," he said. He offered Nadal's pen back to him. "Could you sign her shirt?"

"Sure, no problem," Nadal said, and then in very careful English to Cesca, "You come more closer, please, no?"

He scrawled his signature on her back, and when she turned around she finally blurted out in Catalan, "I hope you win gold!" The side of her face that Leo could see was brick red.

"Are you in the Spanish delegation?" Nadal asked, clearly taken aback. "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you." His Catalan was so strangely accented that Leo could barely understand him.

"I play for England," Cesca said. "I live in London with my brother. But I was born in Barcelona."

"Oh," Nadal said politely. Cesca bit her lip, and Leo awkwardly put his hand on the small of her back. He knew why she didn't play for Spain - he'd been there when she _decided_ not to play for Spain, and he'd let her practice explaining her decision to her brother on him - but no number of arguments about funding and organization and actually getting to play in major tournaments was going to make her feel better about the blank incomprehension on Nadal's face.

"Oh, hey, you found them!" One of the other guys from the Argentina delegation - a tennis player, Leo thought; he and Kun had hit it off - came jogging up. He and Nadal hugged, and Kun waved. "I thought I was going to have to haul you over and ask for his autograph for you, you pussy. Anyway, I was going to tell you, we were thinking about having a Playstation tournament after dinner, you in? All of you," he added in the the general direction of Kun and Leo. "Bring your girlfriend, if you want."

Leo reflexively grabbed Cesca's arm, even though she'd mostly grown out of punching people when they pissed her off. "Thanks," he said. "But - "

"Sure, let's go," Cesca said. Leo turned to stare at her. "What? It'll be fun. I'll kick your ass."

"Cool!" The tennis player - Monaco, that was his name - grinned at them. "Kun knows where my room is. See you later, okay? Rafa, we've got the practice court in five minutes, and I think your uncle is waiting."

"Shit," Nadal said succinctly, and bolted.

"What was _that?_ " Leo whispered as Cesca sat back down to finish her lunch. "I've never seen you get like that before."

"Yeah, well," she said, her mouth twisted ruefully. "I've never met Guardiola, either."

Leo thought about that while she dug into her pasta. "So what do I get for getting Nadal's autograph for you? Cesca?" He poked her in the side.

She looked up and grinned. "I don't know, what do you want?"

*

  
**Stunted Style: There's No Such Thing As Formal Sneakers**   
  
Category: Fashion, English Premier League, Women's Premier League, The Captains Fabregas, Dressed At Gunpoint

It pains us to admit it, Kickette soldier boys and girls, but we think it might be time to take a stand. As you know, our unwavering adoration and admiration for the lovely, down-to-earth Francesca Fabregas (older sister of [perennial Finest Five member](http://www.kickette.com/) Carlos Fabregas, captain of the Arsenal Ladies, and prime reason behind the creation of our [Gentlemen's Auxiliary](http://www.kickette.com/)) has led us to [waive our usual standards](http://www.kickette.com/) of fashion analysis before. And we stand by our decision: girl's a career athlete, not a career WAG. If we don't judge the menfolk for an unvarying t-shirt, jeans and sneakers combo on their way to and from practice, it would be rankest sexism for us to take issue with Cesca's [daily wardrobe decisions](http://www.kickette.com/) \- espesh since we have yet to spy her toting a manpurse around. (We assure you that if she ever acquires a piece of man-candy to parade about, once we finish crying in the ladies room over the impossibility of ever fulfilling our lesbian fantasies, he will be subjected to the same stringent levels of scrutiny that you have come to expect of us where the significant others of 'ballers are concerned.) But - BUT -

When the gentlemen are done up in tuxes for a night out on the town, we say it's game on for the ladies, too. And Cesca is usually to be [relied upon](http://www.kickette.com/) for these occasions, so it's not like we're calling her out as a repeat offender. We love you, Cesca! We're just a little concerned. She looked gorgeous as usual… down to the knees. (Well, okay, we think the skirt's a little short, but when you've got legs like Cesca Fabregas you can get away with it.) And then, this:

[   
](http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/meretricula/?action=view&current=shoes.jpg)

We know, Cesca. We understand. Your [love for your converses](http://www.kickette.com/) is well-documented and it must have been so tempting to finally own a pair for formal occasions. But we have to break it to you: there's no such thing as formal sneakers. Adding plastic platform heels to your tennis shoes doesn't dress them up; it just makes them tacky.

Not, of course, that she's even feeling the heat for this faux pas in the wider media, since as per usual Getty Images has [mistakenly labeled](http://www.kickette.com/) her in all of their photos as her brother's [notoriously media-shy](http://www.kickette.com/) girlfriend, Carla Dona Garcia. Still marginally less creepy than the time they [got Cesca's name right](http://www.kickette.com/) but called her his wife.

What do you think, Kickette Army? Are we right to censure our beloved idol for letting us down on the fashion front, or are her shoes totally within the realms of sartorial acceptability - or even just totally awesome? Drop a comment and let us know!

[source: Kickette.com](http://www.kickette.com/stunted-style-an-ode-to-white-suits/)

*

When the whistle finally blew, all Leo could think was _we won, we won,_ and he hugged Kun so hard he could barely breathe while Kun half-sang, half-shouted in his ear, "No te deja, no te deja de alentar!" They all ran back onto the pitch, screaming and hugging and crying, and Leo sang "Vamos, vamos Argentina," until his voice cracked.

If he'd said Cesca so much as crossed his mind, he would have been lying; he had completely forgotten she existed, or that anything existed besides his teammates in blue and white and the medals that were going to be put around their necks. He only remembered when they finally headed back to the locker room, and he looked up and saw her in the stands looking down at him, just fucking _beaming_ , and he thought, without any real consciousness of it, _I will never see anything more beautiful than this._

"Cesca!" he screamed up at her. She was leaning down over the railing, laughing, her face covered in smeared blue and white paint; she was Cesca and Argentina and _football_ and he didn't know - he didn't know what he even wanted to say, but it was bubbling up inside him and he had to open his mouth or he thought he was going to explode. "Cesca, I love you!"

"You beautiful little fucker!" she hollered back. The flag draped over her shoulders slipped, and all she was wearing under it was the sports bra that went with her away kit. She was burnt pink and dripping with sweat in the Beijing summer sun and Leo had seen her _naked_ before, more than once, but his mouth still went dry. "I love you too!"

*

[IMAGE DESC. A teenage boy wearing an Arsenal jersey being interviewed by a reporter.]

TRANSCRIPT  
INT: Congratulations on your goal, you're the youngest player to ever score for Arsenal's first team.

CF: Thank you.

INT: We noticed your dedication of the goal, was it to anyone in particular? A new lady in your life?

CF: (laughter) You get me in trouble with my girlfriend! No, no, is not for - is for my sister, no? Because she come with me from Spain, she leave home to be here with me, so I want to say her, thank you. This is my first goal, no? But all my goals, they are for her.

[source: YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/)

*

Carlos didn't even bother to knock on Leo's door before he used the spare key he'd swiped from Geri and walked in. He only had a couple of days in Barcelona before he had to go back to London, and he wanted to see Leo, and the fucker wasn't answering his Blackberry, which had to be a first since he'd bought the damn thing. Ergo, Leo was sleeping, and would no doubt be delighted to have Carlos wake him up by jumping on him.

The weird noises registered while Carlos was in the hall, and he followed them into Leo's living room. "What the hell, are you watching _porn_ in here or - _son of a bitch_."

Leo wasn't watching porn. He could have been acting in it, though, considering that he was naked, sweaty and on top of a woman. Who happened to be Carlos' sister.

"The fuck is wrong with you?" Cesca demanded, shoving herself upright on the couch and pushing Leo along with her. Carlos focused his eyes on Leo's tattoo of his mother and tried not to think about why that movement had made Leo squeak or the fact that Leo's torso was the only thing covering Cesca's breasts. "Get out!"

"You're having sex with Leo," Carlos said blankly. "You're having _sex_. With _Leo_."

"Well not _anymore_ you cockblocking little fuck," Cesca snapped. In the silence, the television suddenly blared _GOOOOOOL! Gol de Barcelona!_

"You're having sex with Leo while _watching a Barcelona match_ ," Carlos said. "This has to be a nightmare."

"Do I criticize the nineties pop music you play every time Carla spends the night? No, because I am a good sister who doesn't fucking _walk in on you having sex_. Christ. Would you just - go into the kitchen, all right? I'm getting dressed."

"With Leo. _Leo_ ," Carlos muttered, but he retreated to the kitchen, where he spent a good ten minutes trying to unravel the mysteries of Leo's coffee machine while he definitely did not speculate about why Cesca could be taking so long to put on her clothes. Or the box of condoms he'd seen on the floor by the couch. At least she was using condoms, he thought, or he would have, if he were thinking about it. Which he wasn't.

"Okay, fuckwit," Cesca said. He silently offered her the first cup of coffee. She accepted it, so she wasn't actually planning to kill him.

"So," he said awkwardly. She sat down at the table and stared at him, baleful and cranky, but that wasn't so different from when he accidentally woke her up from a nap. She was wearing a Barcelona training shirt that had to belong to Leo, though, and that was enough to remind him that this was actually nothing like leaving the volume on the TV up too loud while he played videogames in the living room so Cesca came crashing out of her bedroom and then ended up playing with him for three hours instead of going back to bed. "So, you and Leo."

"Yeah," she said.

"So, um. How long has that been going on?"

"The Olympics."

"Oh." At least she hadn't - hadn't _lied_ about it, or kept it a secret forever, he thought, even if she hadn't told him, and he'd called her and babbled for an hour after the first time Carla let him kiss her. "Oh, okay."

"I wasn't - Carlos." She frowned. "Carlos, I would have told you. It was just - you know, the Olympics, and you weren't there, and Kelly was - I don't know, she didn't think it was a good idea, and I wasn't sure if - I would have told you, okay. I would have told you when I came home."

"We _are_ home," he said, because he couldn't quite let it go. Her suitcase was in their mother's house and so was his, even if she hadn't been there that morning when his flight got in.

"Home in London, god, don't be stupid," she said impatiently.

"Oh," he said again. "Okay. Um. So, should I - I mean, Leo."

She sighed. "Look, don't - I can take care of myself, okay? You don't have to do anything."

"I just meant - "

"Uh, should I - ?" Leo had drifted into the kitchen, thankfully fully dressed. He looked embarrassed and lost and Carlos felt - it was Leo's fucking kitchen. He shouldn't look lost in his own kitchen.

"Hey," Cesca said, holding out her hand. Leo shuffled over and took it, and then yelped when she yanked hard enough to make him fall onto her lap. "Hey," she repeated, almost too quietly for Carlos to hear.

"Hey," Leo said. Cesca put her arms around his waist and he relaxed perceptibly back into her.

"So you have to treat Cesca right," Carlos said. "Or I'll kill you."

" _Carlos_ \- " Cesca snapped.

"And you have to promise to be nice to Leo," he went on doggedly. "Okay?"

"Oh," Leo said. Over his shoulder, Carlos could see Cesca smiling at him.

"Okay," she said. "I promise."

*

[   
](http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/meretricula/?action=view&current=gossipgirltonite.png)

[source: Twitter](http://twitter.com/#!/cesc4official)

*

The club was pretty dark and very loud, and Leo didn't really feel like partying, but he couldn't quite bring himself to ruin anyone else's night, or even just get up and leave on his own. Instead he took another sip of his disgustingly sweet drink and scanned the crowd of bodies on the dancefloor until he located Cesca's bright red dress. She was clinging to Geri like an octopus, which could have been upsetting, except that Leo wasn't the jealous type and also he was pretty sure she was just too drunk to stand on her own. As he watched, Carlos came up to them and Cesca transferred her hold on Geri's waist to Carlos' neck. He wasn't sure if she was actually trying to dance or just wobbling.

"You don't look like you're having fun," Carla said. Leo jumped, and knocked over his drink. They both scrambled for napkins. "Oh, shit, sorry, I didn't - "

"It was awful anyway," Leo said, shrugging. "Don't worry about it."

"Okay." Carla flashed a quick smile. "But you're not off the hook, you know. What's wrong?"

"Not really my kind of party," Leo said wryly. "And it's not like I've got much to celebrate."

She winced. "Sorry. I didn't - sorry."

"No, it's not - it's fine, you know? It's not every day your country wins the World Cup." Leo shook himself, trying to get rid of his mood. "Why aren't you out there dancing, too?"

Carla laughed. "Let's just say this isn't really my kind of party either."

Leo toasted her with his empty glass. He couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't bitter or self-pitying and Carla never seemed to mind the quiet, so the silence could have stretched out indefinitely, but Cesca interrupted before it could reach awkward lengths. "I am so drunk," she announced behind Leo. He caught her arm before her stumble could turn into an actual fall. "So, so drunk. Leo, I brought you a - a - I don't know what this is." Leo squinted at the drink in her hands. He didn't know what it was either, but it looked like a fishbowl full of ice and glass cleaner. "But it's for you!" Cesca added cheerfully.

"Thank you," Leo said.

"Cesca, could you tell Carlos that Leo and I are going back to the hotel?" Carla asked. Leo looked at her sharply. "I'm really tired."

Cesca blinked. "The hotel?"

"I'm tired," Carla said. "Leo is going to walk me back."

"Oh, _tired_ ," Cesca said. She set the goldfish bowl of blue alcohol on the table and put her arms around Carla with a total disregard for her personal space, or the fact that every exposed inch of her own skin was shiny with sweat. "Carla. Carla. You don't want to dance?"

"Not right now," Carla said patiently. "Right now I'm tired. We're going to go back, okay?"

"Back," Cesca repeated. "Oh. The hotel. Okay, stay here. I'll be right back."

"No, we're going to - oh, for god's sake," Carla said. Cesca was already gone; she shimmied and slithered away through the crowd with the kind of ease that only very drunk people ever seemed to achieve. Leo was pretty sure that if he'd tried to follow her he would have gotten approximately two meters before someone stepped on his foot or cracked an elbow into his nose, but Cesca got to Carlos and dragged him back before Leo could even work up the nerve to try the contents of the fishbowl.

"Where are we going?" Carlos asked, swaying.

Carla just looked at him, hands on her hips. "I'll take Cesca if you take Carlos," she said at last. "Come on."

Leo draped one of Carlos' arms over his shoulders, put his own arm around his waist and started to edge towards the exit. Carla seemed to be navigating Cesca with just a linked elbow, but he didn't feel up to that sort of challenge. The night air as they spilled out into the street was like coming up from underwater after the smoky club, and Leo breathed in. It was that strange sort of moment when you looked around yourself and were suddenly, inexplicably grateful to be alive: maybe he hadn't won the World Cup, maybe his team had gone out in utterly humiliating fashion and he hadn't scored a single goal, but night in Ibiza was beautiful and he would be back in Barcelona soon, and that was Cesca's voice up ahead, rambling about what would happen if Gossip Girl were about football players. Life was pretty good.

"Leo," Carlos said. "Leo."

"Yeah?"

"Leo, I wish you were Spanish," Carlos said very seriously.

"I like being from Argentina," Leo said.

"I know," Carlos sighed. He put his head on Leo's shoulder; Leo just hoped he wasn't drooling. Carla glanced back at them with a sympathetic grimace. "I just wish we could play together again."

"Come back to Barcelona," Leo suggested, which was glib and unhelpful but was also sort of something he wanted badly enough that he couldn't say it out loud completely sober. He wasn't - he was happy, he liked his life, he wasn't _pining_ , no matter what fucking Geri thought, but he wanted Carlos and Cesca to come home. Knowing that they were probably better off where they were didn't actually help.

"Maybe someday," Carlos said. He pressed a wet, smacking kiss to Leo's cheek. "I miss you too, _hombre_."

"Fuck off, Carlos, you can't have him!" Cesca yelled.

" _You_ fuck off, he should be so lucky! Everybody knows I'm the pretty one!" Carlos started windmilling his free arm in Cesca's general direction. Leo wasn't sure what he was trying to do, but he was deeply grateful to arrive at the hotel without anyone falling over or breaking something.

"Trade you," Carla said with a sigh. Leo helped her wrestle Carlos into their room and left her to handle the rest. Cesca, thankfully, had stayed where they left her, leaning against the wall in the hallway.

"Leo, you don't care I'm not the pretty one, right?" she asked as he tried to unlock their door. "You don't like Carlos better than me?"

"Of course I like you best," Leo said, distracted. He finally got the door open and turned around to get Cesca inside; she was staring at him with a ridiculous pout than only got more pronounced as he half-carried, half-dragged her to bed. "Cesca, you're my best friend. I'll always like you best. And I think you're prettier than everyone else in the world, but I wouldn't care if you were - I don't know, if you were ugly and scarred and cross-eyed. Your football is beautiful."

"Oh." Cesca blinked up at him. Leo felt utterly ridiculous, even though she probably wouldn't remember a word he'd said in the morning, but he still let her pull him down to the bed beside her when she held out her arms. "Leo, I love you too." For a moment, Leo wondered how it was even possible for anyone to understand another person as well as Cesca, half-asleep and falling-down drunk, understood him. Then she climbed onto his lap and kissed him, sloppy and insistent, and he didn't really care anymore.

"Cesca," he panted. She kept rocking back and forth as she stabbed her tongue into his mouth, a nasty dare to go her one better. Leo sucked on her tongue until she came up for air moaning, but the pressure on his rapidly hardening cock was infuriating, enough to tease but not anything more, so he grabbed her around the waist and flipped her over on the bed, and covered her body with his own. "Cesca, you want - "

"You gonna fuck me?" She grinned at him, bright and challenging in the dim lamp-light. Leo felt her legs wrap around his waist and couldn't help the involuntary buck of his hips. "That's what _I_ want."

"Yeah, okay, _fuck_ \- " and Cesca didn't unhook her legs behind his back but she reached down to rub at herself through her underwear, and _god_ but he needed to be inside her. " _Fuck_ , okay, hang on, I have to get - Cesca, I will be right back."

"Don't take too long, I'm not going to wait for you," she said lazily. He made the mistake of looking back at her and nearly walked into the bathroom door. She'd gotten her underwear down to her ankles and left it there, her dress flipped up and her thighs spread. She wasn't putting on a show; her eyes were closed, and he could tell by now when she was doing something just to turn him on, because that was the only time she was loud. She was fingering herself because she was too impatient to wait for him to get back and do it for her.

" _Fuck_ ," Leo said again, low and heartfelt, and ducked into the bathroom to look for condoms. It didn't really help that his hands were shaking. "Sorry, sorry," he added when he finally came back into the bedroom. It had taken over five minutes of digging through various toiletries to find the condoms, and he didn't really want to know why Cesca had packed them with her razors. "I didn't mean to - _are you fucking serious._ "

She looked so innocent, passed out in a sprawl across the bed, that for a moment Leo almost felt guilty for being annoyed, and then he had to laugh. "I'm never letting you live this down," he murmured, settling beside her head. She twitched in her sleep, turning towards him, and he brushed a finger over her cheek. "Months of mockery, I promise." He pressed a kiss to her forehead and went to go jerk off in the shower.

*

  
**Lionel Messi: Off The Market?**   
  
Category: La Liga, Hook Ups, Rumour Mill

 **Leo Messi & ???**

 **UPDATE: Messi has semi-refuted his grandfather's comments from earlier this week by saying[at a presser today](http://www.kickette.com/): _"There must have been some sort of misunderstanding. Nothing has changed in my personal life. Right now I'm very happy concentrating on my football."_**

 **Grasping at straws, we know, but he did say that nothing had changed, not that he was single…**

According to Messi's [loud-mouth Grandpa](http://blogs.terra.es/blogs/lomasvisto/archive/2011/01/12/Messi-ya-no-esta-con-su-novia.aspx), the one 'baller so in love with the game that he's never [had time for a girlfriend](http://www.kickette.com) (maybe this is why he's the best in the world? other players, take note!) might not be so single after all. Asked whether he hoped for more descendants from his superstar grandkid, Gramps responded that he would love to see some sprogs, and said superstar grandkid would love to get to the business of making them, but his girlfriend doesn't want children. Imaginary S.O. invented to placate the family at Christmas (footballers! they're just like us!), or super-secret ladyfriend kept under wraps? Let us know what you think in the comments!

[source: Kickette.com](http://www.kickette.com/barca-ballers-love-files-gerard-pique-leo-messi/)

*

"You should do something about that," Cesca's mother said behind her. Cesca hummed in vague acknowledgement, more interested in watching Leo play with her cousins. He could never say no to them, so he'd already ended up roped into giving piggyback rides, and she gave him five minutes before the youngest one was using him as a pony. "Cesca. Are you listening to me?"

"Sorry, Mama," Cesca said reflexively.

"That man wants children," Nuria said. "He's not going to wait forever. When are you going to settle down and give him some?"

" _Mother_ ," Cesca hissed. "For god's sake. My job involves running really fast for ninety minutes and sometimes getting knocked over by women twice my size. I can't do that if I'm pregnant."

"Your job, your job, always with your job. You think Lionel Messi's wife needs a job?"

"I _love_ my job. And Leo isn't - I have no interest in living off Leo's money, all right?"

"You've lived off your brother's money all your life," Nuria said dismissively. Cesca gaped at her, too furious even to speak. "It's a little late to be developing scruples about that. Do you love your job more than you love Leo? Because sooner or later it will be one or the other, and your job won't be there to take care of you fifty years from now."

"I think you and Dad have given me plenty of evidence that marrying someone and having kids doesn't guarantee that they'll stay with you for the next _fifteen_ years, let alone fifty," Cesca snapped, and was viciously pleased when her mother's face went white. "And I don't know how my relationship with Leo is any of your business."

"I'm trying to _help_ you," Nuria said stiffly. "But if you can't appreciate that then I'll leave you alone."

"You do that." Cesca stood her ground and watched her mother walk away. It wasn't all that satisfying, but at least she had her pride.

She managed to hold it together until the end of the party, or at least she faked it well enough to pass, although Carlos kept giving her strange looks and he tried to corner her once on her way to the bathroom. Cesca pretended not to notice; she wasn't going to ruin his birthday over yet another fight with their mother. She only had a few hours to spend in Barcelona before she had to fly back for training and she had no intention of wasting them on something pointless and unpleasant.

It bothered her, though. She knew it shouldn't have, that her mother never had and never would understand why she needed to play, but still - "You want kids, don't you?" she asked abruptly, halfway through the drive to the airport. Leo glanced at her sidelong and then back at the road.

"Someday, yeah."

"You're twenty-seven," she said flatly. "'Someday' isn't that far off now."

"Cesca, what - "

"And I can't - I'm not going to retire for years. So maybe it shouldn't be with me."

"I don't want _a_ family, I want _our_ family," Leo said. He took one hand off the steering wheel and, without looking, flicked her in the cheek. "I can wait."

*

[   
](http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/meretricula/?action=view&current=messipressconferencetophalf.png)   
[   
](http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/meretricula/?action=view&current=messipressconferencebottomhalf.png)

[source: Twitter](http://twitter.com/#!/barcastuff)

*

 **  
Messi: "I love this club and will retire here"   
**

David Puig

 **Barça's star striker and vice captain expressed his pleasure with the team's recent performances and his support for coach Luis Enrique, although due to personal reasons he has chosen to allow his contract with the club to run out and retire at the end of the season.**

[   
](http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/meretricula/?action=view&current=messipressconference.jpg)

"I am very happy with the way the team has played, we are working very hard in training and it is paying off on the field. We need to keep focused on maintaining our level, because every game is difficult," Messi asserted, echoing the sentiments of coach Luis Enrique earlier in the week. "Our opponents always make things difficult for us but I am very proud to be able to play with these teammates because I know we will do our best to help each other and win each match."

 **Retirement, not renewal**

Messi once again voiced his pride and love for the club where he has played since the age of thirteen, but he also gave an announcement that will be a sad blow to Barça fans around the world: he will be retiring at the end of the season. "I've always said I want to retire at Barça and I want to leave while I can still play at the level the club deserves. It was a difficult decision for me but I will not be renewing my contract. I have no interest in joining another club. I will retire from football immediately when the season ends. I can only say thank you to this great club for everything it has done for me."

 **Reasons for departure purely personal**

Messi swiftly rejected any suggestion that conflict with coach Luis Enrique was behind his decision to retire. "I have the greatest respect for Luis Enrique. He is an amazing coach and has done amazing things for this team. I have confidence that he and the team will continue to do the same outstanding job whether I am playing or not." Instead, he assured the media that his reasons were personal: "I want to spend more time with my family."

[source: FCB.cat](http://www.fcbarcelona.com/web/english/noticies/futbol/temporada10-11/03/16/n110316116333.html)

*

  
**Lionel Messi: Taking His Toys And Going Home**   
  
Category: La Liga, Player News

 **Leo Messi Shock Retirement Announcement**

 **UPDATE 2: Purely circumstantial, but as an alert reader pointed out - what's Cesca Fabregas doing in Barcelona during the WPS season? Leaving Messi's house? Looking… kind of pregnant?**

 **A Messi-Fabregas baby is pretty much the only thing that could possibly make us feel okay with Leo's retirement. Fingers crossed that this rumour turns out to be true.**

 **UPDATE: Word out of Spain is that Leo cited an imminent bundle of joy as his reason for retiring now, rather than, say, when he actually reached retirement age. To the best of our knowledge, he's been single for years. Does anyone have information on the identity of his babymama? He's requested that the paps respect his family's privacy but when has that ever stopped them from digging up the name of a 'baller's girlfriend?**

Shocking news from Barcelona today as five-time winner of the Ballon d'Or and all-around professional cutiepie Lionel Messi has announced that he's retiring at the end of the season. He's only twenty-nine, with no major injuries, and still a regular starter for his team, where he is treated with the adoration normally afforded to a god. He has never suggested he was even slightly unhappy at Barcelona. In all sincerity, Kickettes, we're stunned.

[source: Kickette.com](http://www.kickette.com/barca-ballers-love-files-gerard-pique-leo-messi/)

*

Cesca was driving home from practice when the club doctors called her about the results of her latest physical, and she had absolutely no memory of how she'd ended up on Kelly Smith's doorstep after she hung up the phone, but it wasn't like she'd had anywhere else she could go. She hadn't really planned on bursting into tears as soon as Kelly opened the door, either. " _Kelly_ ," she wailed. "Kelly, I'm _pregnant_."

"Oh dear," Kelly said.

A few feet behind her, Kelly's husband said, "I'll go put the kettle on."

*

  
**FIFA Ballon d'Or 2015 - LIVE! January 12**   


**FIFA Ballon d'Or 2015 Live with FourFourTwo 12.1.15**

Huw Davies: FRANCESCA FABREGAS, ladies and gentlemen!

Tim Stannard: Good lord, someone finally wrestled the trophy out of Marta's hands. Even Cesca looks like she can't believe it. They should rename it the Marta da Silva Player of the Year Award.

Huw Davies: Not that Cesca doesn't deserve it. Hard to argue with her stats. Record number of assists in the league, highest number of assists in World Cup qualifiers, player of the tournament in the last European Cup. It's a tribute to Marta that she held Cesca off as long as she did.

Huw Davies: Cesca's giving her speech in English, interesting. Says thank you to all her teammates - Arsenal Ladies, England and the Boston Breakers.

Huw Davies: And now she's switched to Spanish, so Tim will have to take over.

Tim Stannard: She's speaking Catalan, actually. Barcelona born and bred, just like her brother. She's thanking her friends and family for all their support over the years.

Tim Stannard: Oh, wow, she's tearing up. I'm going to translate this word for word:

Tim Stannard: "Thank you especially to my brother Carlos. I don't know who or what I would be without you, but I know I wouldn't be standing here. You always believed in me, even when I didn't believe in myself, you make me a better player and you make me a better person. I miss you, I love you, I hope you will always be as happy as you deserve. No trophy in the world will ever make me prouder than I am to be your sister."

Huw Davies: She's really crying up there.

Tim Stannard: Her brother's crying too. Hah! Leo Messi dug a tissue out of his pockets for him. Don't see that every day.

Huw Davies: So are they going to let her go sit down again?

Huw Davies: Oh, huh. Apparently they're keeping her up there because she's presenting the men's award. That's a new one.

Tim Stannard: Imagine if her brother wins. Tears by the bucketful!

[source: FourFourTwo.com](http://fourfourtwo.com/news/championsleague/74128/default.aspx)

*

Cesca sat on Kelly's couch and listened while Kelly rambled about the problems with their latest experiment in new formations. If she concentrated, she could just barely hear Tom shuffling around the kitchen making tea. It was like pretty much every time she'd visited Kelly's house, so long as she ignored the mountains of balled-up tissues surrounding her. "Milk and two sugars, right," Tom said, smiling, as he came back into the room.

"What kind of tea is that?" Kelly demanded. Tom blinked at her. Cesca's mouth twitched involuntarily; Tom was, on occasion, so American she wondered how he and Kelly could even communicate.

"The… tea kind?" he hazarded. "That isn't coffee?"

"Cesca's not to have black tea," Kelly said. "She needs herbal. No, the - I'll be right back," she added to Cesca. Cesca reached for another tissue and blew her nose, noisily. She was trying to clean up and had only succeeded in knocking a pile of snotty used tissues onto the floor when Kelly returned. "No, don't worry about that, love," Kelly said kindly. "Tom'll be along with some tea for you in just a tick." She sat down next to Cesca, paused just long enough to make the moment awkward, and then patted Cesca's hand. "So what do you want to do?"

To her disgust and horror, Cesca felt her eyes welling up again. "I don't _know_ ," she said miserably.

"Love, if you don't want - you can - you know you can… nobody will think badly of you, if you just…" _Get rid of it_ , Cesca finished to herself. _If you just get rid of it._

 _This is my career_ , she thought.

 _This is Leo's baby_.

 _This is_ our _baby_.

"I want - I _want_ it," she choked. Her throat was closing up. "I want it and I want _football_ and my mother's going to be _right_ \- "

"Oh, oh no, Cesca," Kelly said, proffering the box of tissues yet again. "It's not - don't - "

"Here's your tea," Tom said, tactful as ever. "And a gentleman who would probably like to speak with you." He was holding the video phone from the kitchen, and Leo's face was on the screen.

"Cesca," Leo said frantically. "Cesca, you're crying, why are you crying, are you hurt? Did something happen to your parents? Who - I don't know what that man was trying to say to me, did he kidnap you? Did he kidnap you and Kelly?"

Cesca shook her head and cried harder.

"You're still in Boston? Don't - I'll be there in, in, how long does it take to fly to Boston, don't worry, okay, I'll - "

"You have _practice_ ," Cesca managed, halfway to hysteria. "You have practice in _Barcelona_ , I live in _America, where is the baby going to live_ \- "

"I don't care about practice, you're - baby?" Leo stuttered to a stop and his face went blank. "Cesca, are you - are we - oh my god."

"I didn't - I know we didn't - "

"Cesca," Leo said. His eyes were shining, but it was impossible to tell, on the low-res phone screen, whether it was with excitement or tears. "Cesca. Are you sure."

"I - the club doctor - _yes_ ," Cesca said, because it wasn't that hard to do the math and count back to the one time that summer when they'd been in too much of a hurry to bother with a condom. "I - "

"I will be there soon," Leo promised. "I can - Cesca, it's going to be all right. No matter what, it's going to be all right."

"But your practice," Cesca said. She felt like a broken record, but she didn't know what else to say.

Leo stared at her. "Do you seriously think I care about _football_ right now? Just - just stay with Kelly, okay? I'll be there as soon as I can." He paused, his hand taking up the entire screen as it hovered over the _end call_ button. "We're having a baby," Leo said, rushed and terrified and _happy_ , "Cesca, I love you, we're having a baby," and the screen went black.

*

  
The Front: El Mundo Deportivo (15.10.2015)

 **MESSI'S MYSTERY AILMENT**

 **Three days of training missed**

 **Fight on the training pitch between Messi and Fabregas, but all smiles afterward**

 **Luis Enrique: Messi will be fit for the Clasico**

 **Barça hopes to renew Thiago within a month**

[source: totalBarça](http://www.totalbarca.com/2011/news/the-front-el-mundo-deportivo-11-03-2011/)

*

Leo had been out on the training pitch for all of half a minute when Carlos came marching up to him and shoved him in the chest so hard he stumbled and nearly fell. "What the fuck!" Carlos yelled. "You _knock up my sister_ and I find out from _Lucho_ , you fucking - "

"Hey - _hey!"_ Gerard pushed between them, one hand on Carlos' shoulder, the other on Leo's arm. "Carlos, _stop it right now_." The three B-team kids who'd been called up for training were staring, wide-eyed and scared. Thiago and Luis Enrique had both started to move in their direction, but Gerard shook his head, and they backed off. "This is not the place," he hissed, still in his captain voice. "I shouldn't have to tell you that. And for fuck's sake, Leo," he added, turning on him, "you got Cesca _pregnant?_ She's got a career, you selfish - "

"Look, it's not like I planned it," Leo snapped. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, okay, but I wasn't sure if she - if she wanted - I didn't know, okay?"

"If - oh. _Oh_." Carlos froze momentarily. "Wait. Oh, Jesus, Leo, I didn't - are you - is she - "

"We talked about it," Leo said. "She's going to wrap up for the season and come stay here until - until. And then we're going to go back together."

"Back to - " Gerard said.

"Are you sure?" Carlos interrupted quietly. "I know it's not - Leo."

"It's what I want," Leo said, and it was easy to say because it was. He smiled suddenly. "It's - god. We're having a _baby_."

Carlos inspected him closely, and then finally grinned back. "Holy shit, I guess you are."

"Guess that makes us uncles," Gerard said, draping an arm around both of them.

"Any time you're ready to start stretching," Lucho called.

"Yeah, yeah, we're coming!" Carlos shouted. "You'd better be naming this kid after me, that's all I'm saying," he added as they walked over to join the rest of the group.

"Cesca thinks it's going to be a girl," Leo said.

"Yeah?" Carlos peered around Gerard to look at Leo. Leo couldn't quite manage to keep himself from beaming. "Carlota's a nice name."

"Carlota," Leo repeated thoughtfully. "Yeah."

*

[IMAGE DESC. Two men, one middle aged, one much younger, both wearing FC Barcelona scarves, jumping to their feet in the stands of a football stadium. They are surrounded by fans in red and white. A dark-haired woman wearing an Arsenal jersey, still seated, is dragging at the sleeve of the younger man; her other hand is over her eyes.]

TRANSCRIPT  
INT: So I was going through footage of the 2006 Champions League final and I found something -

FF: Oh, wow.

INT: So that is you?

FF: Wow, that's amazing. I can't believe somebody - well, I guess it probably looked pretty funny, even if they didn't recognize us. Yeah, that - wow. That's crazy.

INT: So, 2006 -

FF: Yeah (laughter). Yeah, it's funny, you know, because I look so - gosh, I look right hacked off, don't I? If Barça had scored against anybody else in that final, you know - I mean, my whole family, we're Barcelona fans, my granddad brought me and my brother to the stadium when we were babies, I've been a socio since birth. And Leo Messi's one of my best friends, I was really happy for him to win the Champions League, even if he didn't get to play. But that was my brother down there on the pitch, you know? That was my team. And then (laughter) I was sitting with Geri Pique and his dad, and - Geri is Carlos's best friend, so Carlos got us the tickets, so we were sitting with the Arsenal fans. And Geri's a great guy, you know, I've known him since we were eleven or something, he's fantastic, even if he is a fucking Manc, excuse my language. But him and his dad, you cut open a vein, they'd bleed blaugrana, they didn't care who was sitting around them. I was afraid we were going to get lynched.

[source: YouTube](http://youtube.com/)

*

"Leo. Leo. Leo, wake up."

Leo rolled over and groaned. "What time is it?"

"Leo, what if our baby doesn't like football? What if it - what if it likes maths, or music, or - "

"Our baby can like whatever she wants," Leo said patiently. "Even maths. It doesn't matter, all right? You will love her and she will love you and you will be a good parent. Go back to sleep." He turned over again and mashed his face into his pillow. "She'll probably like football, though," he mumbled, already falling asleep. "I mean, she's going to be related to Carlos. I wouldn't worry about it."

*

 **The Prodigal Son**  
 **HIS DISAPPEARANCE ROCKED THE FOOTBALL WORLD, BUT NOW LIONEL MESSI HAS FINALLY RETURNED TO CATALUNYA - AT LEAST FOR A VISIT.**  
SID LOWE

 **IT'S BEEN FOUR YEARS** since Leo Messi, five-time winner of the Ballon d'Or, announced out of the blue that he was retiring from football to raise a family - an unusual ambition for a male athlete, especially considering he was only twenty-nine at the time. He played out the season, once again winning the league with Barcelona, and true to his word he was gone.

Where did he go? Not home to Argentina, surprisingly enough. He followed long-time partner Francesca Fabregas to North America, where she plays for the WPS, the American women's professional soccer league. She went back to work and Messi settled down to the business of raising their baby daughter.

They're back in Catalunya, Fabregas' birthplace and Messi's home for half his life, for both business and pleasure. Her brother Carlos, of whom you may have heard, still plays and lives in the city with his wife and children. Many of Messi's friends from his playing days are here as well; Gerard Pique may be slowing down now that he's past thirty, but he's still the immovable centre-back captain of Barcelona. Most important, however, is Messi's former coach, Pep Guardiola, who has just taken over the duty of coaching the Catalonian national team and is preparing for a friendly against the Basque Country. Catalonia isn't recognized by FIFA and isn't constrained by the same eligibility rules, and Guardiola has taken advantage of their informal status by calling up the Argentine Messi - and his football-playing Catalan wife.

Messi agreed to an interview while he was in town, though it isn't immediately clear why, since getting a complete sentence out of him remains one of the most difficult task in sports journalism - a colleague once likened the experience to pulling teeth. But though he is still painfully, painfully shy, once the subject turns to his daughter, like any new parent, he finds his words. "She's brilliant," he says, beaming. "Absolutely brilliant. Cesca and I are so lucky, she hardly even cried when she was a baby, and she's just happy no matter where we are or what we're doing. I carried her in a sling everywhere when she was littler, even to Cesca's practices, and she was always so curious about everything. She doesn't like it if Cesca and I aren't with her, but so long as we're there, we could go anywhere, nothing bothers her."

At this moment, the woman of the hour rushes into the room, daughter in tow. She has forgotten something, an appointment with a Nike representative, and is already late, I gather from the rapid-fire Catalan she addresses to Messi. He takes their daughter and his wife's kiss on the top of his head with equal equanimity and smiles as she dashes away. Carlota settles into her father's lap, watching me with the bright-eyed curiosity he had just described.

I am curious about the Catalan - Messi and I have been speaking in Spanish - but Messi only shrugs. "She's afraid Carlota won't learn [to speak Catalan]," he elaborates, when pressed. "Because we spend most of the year in America, and people are speaking English around us all the time. So she only speaks Catalan at home, and I speak Spanish. I don't mind. I can understand it fine." He smiles down at Carlota. "She has an Argentine accent in Spanish, because she never hears it from her mother. So she sounds like both of us."

 **Messi doesn't** particularly want to discuss his wife. Of course, Messi has never particularly wanted to discuss anything in his life, but his reticence on the subject of the woman for whom he reportedly sacrificed the end of his career is astonishing - famously, when he announced his imminent retirement, not a single member of the press corps had a clue that he was seeing anyone, let alone that he had been in a committed relationship for nearly a decade. Even the most innocent questions - how did you meet? (they were childhood friends in Barcelona); when did you get married? (a few months before their daughter was born); where will you live when she retires? (a blank stare) - make him fidgety and uncomfortable. If you ask anything more complicated, "Cesca can speak for herself," is all he has to say.

No one is arguing that. The question is, if she did, would anyone listen?

The feelings of football fans, and especially Barcelona fans, towards Cesca Fabregas are complex. She is beloved for her role in bringing her brother home - and no matter how many times either of them denies that she had anything to do with his decision, the suspiciously coincident timing of their departures from Arsenal will always speak louder, though common sense dictates that if either of them was making a sacrifice to keep from holding the other back, it was her brother. She is also reviled for reducing the best football player in the world to a househusband.

That is, of course, an incredibly oversimplified explanation of Messi's retirement. It's easy to blame his wife for stealing him away; it's harder to accept that his career had peaked, that he was staring at a slow decline in form and playing time until he inevitably slipped into total obscurity, that perhaps immediate retirement, still at the top of the footballing world, and the promise of a quiet life with his family had come to outweigh his love for the club and the game to which he had dedicated his life. If Messi is to remain football's messiah, the narrative needs a villain, and Cesca Fabregas happens to be a convenient fit. Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

"I could have played another year at the top level, two, maybe, if I was lucky with injuries," Messi says, shrugging. "People can say what they like. I wanted to retire at Barcelona and I wanted to be with my family. To me it was worth it not to play one more year."

 **More comfortable** ground - slightly - is what Messi has been doing for the past four years. "I stay home, mostly," he says. "I take care of Carlota. Hopefully I'll be able to be more involved with my foundation now that she's a little older and can go to school, but I do work for that when I can. I train with Cesca to stay fit. I coach the neighborhood girls football team."

And this is sufficient to keep the best football player of the past twenty years - arguably of all of time - busy?

Messi looks thoughtful. "It was difficult at the beginning," he concedes. "I didn't know anyone in Boston, I didn't speak the language, I wasn't used to staying home all the time while Cesca was traveling for games. And it was so cold. But it's the same as what any footballer's partner goes through, if they move to a different country. Cesca moved to England when she was sixteen to be with her brother, so she knew what it was like. She helped a lot. My little sister came to stay with us for a while and help with the baby, and I did get to like Boston once I got used to it. I'm glad we're in California now, though. I can read the signs in the grocery store again." The mental image of Lionel Messi standing in the cereal aisle choosing between brands seems too bizarre to pass without comment, but at the same time, no comment could possibly do it justice.

But he has no regrets. "What would I regret?" he asks, looking genuinely puzzled. "I have a beautiful daughter. There's nothing I could have in any other life that would be worth losing her." The only thing that makes Messi angry, in all the time I spent interviewing him, is the suggestion that his wife could have been the one to stay home with their daughter. "Have you ever seen Cesca play," he demands. "Watch her play and tell me then that I should have said, no, you give up football right when you finally get to play pro so we can have a family. Watch her. If you still say that, you know nothing about football. Nothing."

 **It becomes** clear a little later why Messi (and Fabregas) have decided to show their faces in the European media again. The Catalonia-Basque Country game, curious and gimmicky though it is (the idea of male and female footballers on the pitch at the same time seems noble and high-minded, but it plays like a kick-and-giggle; they're different sports and just can't be played at the same time), is raising money that will be split between the two federations and then split again between funding men's and women's activities. The amount allotted to the currently nonexistent Catalonian women's team will be distributed equally to Barcelona and Espanyol, who supply almost all the Catalan women's football players, to fund women's development. If it sounds like a lot of divisions before the money gets to them, that's because there are, and under normal circumstances the end result would be negligible. This time, though, Leo Messi has come out of retirement for the match. Tickets to the Camp Nou sold out in the first week after Guardiola announced he would play.

Barcelona's piece of the pie will go towards establishing a new wing for girls at their famous academy, La Masia. Starting with the under-12s, they are working to create a system that will be equally successful at bringing up female professional football players. The brains, drive and figurehead of the operation? Francesca Fabregas. Her participation for the moment is limited to fundraising and networking during her off-season, but the president has already taken the unusual step of clearing her future appointment, once she retires, with the board. Aside from the awkwardness over Messi, she is the perfect woman for the job: born and raised in Arenys del Mar, not far from Barcelona; the sister of a beloved Barça vice-captain; a lifelong _cule_ ; a proud speaker of Catalan - and, of course, an internationally recognizable woman footballer. Even the fact that she chose to represent England over Spain may play in her favor with the more virulently nationalistic sections of Barcelona's fanbase. And once she brings Messi home again (as it is increasingly clear they both intend, in some coaching capacity or other) all will be forgiven.

A brief taste of what is to come was on display the night of the Catalonia-Basque Country friendly. Fans cheered raucously every time Messi touched the ball - he is slower now, of course, but still possesses the visionary passes to split defenses in two. The Athletic Bilbao defender marking him was over ten years his junior, but still she could only shake her head and smile when he escaped her ten minutes before half-time and scored a brilliant goal off an equally brilliant assist from Fabregas. He celebrated with a modestly blown kiss to their daughter, but the fans and their highly amused teammates kept clapping until he went up to his wife and gave her what might be called in some parts "a right proper snog." When she then went over to the dugout and substituted herself by trading her brother her "#4 Fabregas" jersey in exchange for her daughter and a seat on the bench, they laughed and clapped again.

The match did what it was meant to - it raised money, and it won hearts. The only pity of it is that it took until now for Barcelona to realize what Leo Messi has known since he was thirteen: Francesca Fabregas is every bit as brilliant as he is at football.

 **Anyone watching** their joint post-match press conference could have told you one other appealing fact about Cesca Fabregas: she and Leo Messi are still, after almost fifteen years and a child together, utterly stupid in love with each other. They have an interesting dynamic, to be sure - Messi wasn't joking when he said she could speak for herself. She can speak for him, too, and probably better than he does, though she looks at him before every answer to make sure she isn't taking a question he would rather address himself. She never is, but she always checks.

The one time Messi's interest level rises above "dying of boredom" is towards the end of the presser. Fabregas has fielded questions about the match, about the Catalan and Basque separatist movements, about Guardiola, about her brother, about Messi, and finally there is a question about her: one of the journalists asks if her work with the women's development program at Barcelona is for her daughter.

"My daughter is a four-year-old, not an athlete," Fabregas retorts, choosing to disregard the fact that the only way that her child might fail to possess the greatest sporting pedigree in Spain would be if their tennis federation finally figured out how to clone Rafael Nadal. "And I have no idea whether she will be an athlete. I'm not doing this for her, I am doing it for myself, and for any other girl who dreams of playing football for Barcelona."

The journalist misses her point. But surely her daughter will be an athlete, he protests. Surely a child born in Barcelona, a city of great athletics, the daughter of Lionel Messi -

"This is also a city of great architecture. Maybe she will be an architect."

"An architect?" Messi repeats, looking up from his hands for the first time. Clearly this is not a possibility that has occurred to him before. He thinks for a moment, then beams at his wife. "An architect. That would be good."

 **So don't** cry for Leo Messi, Barcelona. You (and football) may miss him, but he's doing just fine.

[source: Sports Illustrated](http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1169995/1/index.htm)

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. it takes a village. thank you to acchikocchi, dorkorific, here_instead, nahco3, vaginal_parfait and vlieger for their interest and encouragement, aramley, distira, eileenyx, kfunk22, louis_quatorze, mardia and tabacoychanel for their help and criticism, and of course stickmarionette, who when I said, "I'm thinking about writing an AU where Cesc is a girl," replied, "do it!"
> 
> 2\. hopefully this is obvious, but in case not: nearly all the "sources" in this fic are pastiched from real ones, which are linked directly beneath each one. the writing is almost entirely mine, but the interview with Cesc and Phil and the Kickette post about Leo's imaginary girlfriend both contain some unaltered text from the original, and the description in the Rod Liddle article of non-Brits in the WPL as "Jenny Foreigners" comes not from anything written by Rod Liddle but [this article](http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2007/apr/30/womensfootball.sport) by Georgina Turner. not a source for any text or stylistic elements, but for the public reaction to Cesca described in the Sid Lowe article, compare [this article](http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=528411&root=worldcup2010&campaign=rss&source=soccernet&cc=5739) about the role Johan Cruyff's wife may or may not have played in his decision not to attend the World Cup in 1978.
> 
> 3\. I have knowingly altered the real events upon which this fic is based in two places: I changed the birthdates of the Fabregas siblings so that they were born in the same year, and I shoehorned the English women's football team into the Beijing Olympics, even though they didn't qualify and likely wouldn't have been allowed to participate even if they had. I hope you will forgive these and any other unwitting errors on my part, but feel free to point them out for my edification.
> 
> 4\. I'm probably not the right person to write a story about the state of women's football right now, the lack of funding, the media disinterest, the ingrained sexism, the basic inequality that guarantees that Cesc Fabregas, if he were a woman, would have a vastly more difficult life. however, nobody else was writing that story, and I think it needs to be written. it came out as a love story when I tried, and I gave it a happy ending because that's the way I want love stories to end. if you're interested in the reality behind the fairy tale, I can recommend [From A Left Wing](http://fromaleftwing.blogspot.com/) as a good starting point.


End file.
